


A Bitter Heart

by fire_is_my_happy_place



Series: TF2 prompts and drabbles [5]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: F/F, F/M, First Time Lesbian, Jealousy, Self-Discovery, compulsory heterosexuality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-07 18:39:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6819601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fire_is_my_happy_place/pseuds/fire_is_my_happy_place
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Soldier has brought Zhanna back into the US without company permission, triggering Miss Pauling to investigate her. On meeting each other, both women experience mutual fascination which slowly blooms into desire, upsetting the Soldier's relationship with Zhanna and both women's understanding of who they are.</p><p>A little tale of compulsory heterosexuality and the discovery that there is something else, with the consequences as both women learn that they really aren't the way they had been told all their lives that they were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Miss Pauling said nothing, again. She said nothing when the phone rang at three am, its shrill scream scattering her dreams into shards. She said nothing when the mercenaries joked over her head or behind her back, as if she could not hear what they had to say about her, about the fact that she was so much smaller than they, about the diminutive femininity that made her most comfortable in a skirt despite the dual, monstrous pistols she wore in under-the-arm holsters and her aggressively high heels.

She said nothing when the Administrator sent her to dismember a half dozen corpses before breakfast, and still expected her to bring paperwork and a cup of coffee—no sugar, no milk, Arabica only, brewed strong enough to remove gasoline from the driveway—to a morning meeting, pausing only long enough to shrug off her bloodstained clothing and peel off her sticky hose for their replacements before appearing like magic at the Administrator’s side.

She said nothing. There was, after all, nothing to say. She had known when she signed the employment contract that it was a lifetime job, and she’d been grateful to have it. If she lived in some bleak place beyond exhaustion, it was merely the price of working, of coming to work with the same, vacuously kind smile and seeming eager, even full of an obscure kind of pleasure to do the job. Her professional face took full advantage of her relative daintiness and youth, and a rather large number of people had mistaken her for the girl she appeared to be, right up until she killed them.

It wasn’t as if she had any spare time to have a life outside work in any case. Even if she had regular time off, she had no doubt that the phone would ring, and she would learn that the mercenaries had set their bases on fire, or that she would have to hunt down and discretely murder an entire family to prevent someone from interfering with an acquisition TFI had planned.

And if she had time to cultivate something like a social life, she wouldn’t have been able to do so anyway. What would she tell a friend about her long absences? How would she explain a splotch of blood on her steering wheel to a date? Who could she possibly be close to that would not ask why she rolled out of bed without complaint, no matter the hour, and returned a few hours later, sweaty and covered in bloody mud?

No, it was better this way. That was the end of it: practical, necessary, final.

Miss Pauling checked her hair in the rearview mirror, smoothing an errant lock back with her hand, then sighed. Another day. Another paycheck. Another murder spree. With an unconscious grimace, she opened the car door and stepped onto the gravel that marked the local TFI office driveway. A gentle click and she had closed the door of the rental car, swinging a gear bag disguised as a fashionably oversized purse over one shoulder, its straps reinforced by hand to make it capable of bearing ten pounds without cutting into her shoulder.

Crunching across the parking lot, she habitually scanned the cars. The office was lightly staffed, despite its proximity to a major city, and purposefully so. Its function was to monitor the mercenaries. Or rather, to keep an eye on the damage the mercenaries might do to the closest large city during their days off.

At current count, six cars, mostly well-used trucks and sedans, the ubiquitous beige of sand peppering them with specks from the morning rain. Nothing out of place. Nothing she didn’t expect. The building itself was a portable, the AC unit already chugging to keep up with the cloudless sky, the hot coin of the sun burning it from cerulean to a faded blue. Miss Pauling stomped up the ramp, stopping at its top to scrape the gritty mud from her heels and open the door with a creak.

The secretary looked up from her magazine and, seeing Miss Pauling’s familiar face, turned back to her article on twelve ways to please a man. Miss Pauling passed the desk without acknowledging her, headed for a small office they kept especially for her. The Administrator’s call that morning had informed her of a new team member on RED, or rather someone who had arrived with the Soldier, to be screened with as much haste as possible—the Soldier, to no one’s surprise, had simply bundled the woman into the private TFI plane and ferried her across a multitude of international borders. He hadn’t asked, informed, or even notified anyone that the woman was coming, and it likely hadn’t occurred to him that taking a Russian national with a criminal record across six international borders using TFI resources to skip customs was both a headache for the company and at least five kinds of illegal.

She was still grinding her teeth about that one—while the company had the necessary money and connections to bury the consequences, having to rush out of the house before she’d had time for breakfast in order to meet their agent at immigration and offer him entirely too much money in a manila envelope had started her morning with a gnawing headache.

As the Administrator had promised, a red file lay alone on the dusty desk, bristling with post-it tabs and paperclips. Miss Pauling dusted the chair off with her hand and sat in it with an angry squeal from the springs. Before she’d had time to open the folder, a knock sounded on the open door. Miss Pauling looked up, her glasses slipping slightly down her sweat-slick nose.

“Ma’am?” The slight frame of Busley leaned through the doorframe and Miss Pauling plastered a neutral smile on her face, for the sake of professionality and the brief, boring sex they’d had at the tail of the company Christmas party last year.

“Yes?”

Busley cleared his throat. “The Administrator said to tell you that our new guest needs to meet you no later than lunch time. The teams are scheduled to leave for Sawmill at 2 pm by bus and the guest needs to travel with them.”

Miss Pauling briefly pictured leaping up, grabbing Busley by the collar and bashing his brains in against the door frame, but contented herself with a long, slow blink.

In her silence, Busley spoke again. “I just wanted you to know that I really enjoyed our little… liaison. If you ever wanted to….”

She plastered the smile on her face again, its neutrality ruined by the fact that her lips had peeled away from her teeth. “Me, too, Busley. It’s just that the Administrator keeps me so busy.” _And I’d rather fuck myself with a chainsaw than have you fumbling at my tits for ten minutes while I pretend to enjoy myself_ , she added silently.

Busley blushed, looking away, and mumbled something inaudible before leaving her alone. Finally able to open the file, she took a deep breath and started to read.

A frown creasing her forehead, she re-read.

“It can’t be…”

It was. The next line confirmed it. For whatever reason, the plane had flown home with the Heavy and one of his little sisters, making the guest probably seven feet tall, hairy like a bear, and just as burly. Miss Pauling’s hand made a quiet smack as it flew into her face. The Heavy had been bad enough—hiding a Russian national during the Red Scare had taken no small amount of work on her part, more so since the man had decided to try and take a tour of his adopted homeland while McCarthy was sending out his blacklist letters and had utterly refused to mask his characteristic accent. The current political climate was not as hostile, but if his sister had the same bull-headed stubbornness and hot temper as her brother, Miss Pauling could kiss even the few hours she’d managed to scrape together goodbye.

She didn’t want to think about what the Soldier might add to that disaster.

Leafing quickly through the rest of the file was no comfort, either. Miss Pauling suspected that part of the Heavy’s ridiculous stubbornness came from the camps he’d escaped. His sister was old enough to have experienced the labor camp with him. She’d apparently been living in a cabin somewhere in Siberia, and was likely just as poorly socialized and likely to cause trouble as her brother still did, trying to exist in American society.

“Two of them,” she groaned. “There’s two of them.”

Miss Pauling eyed her wristwatch and swore. Snatching the file to her chest, she strode swiftly to her rental car, the loud creaking grumble of her stomach startling the secretary into alertness. She was just going to have to look at it in more detail later. The three hour drive to their current base was going to eat up the rest of her morning.


	2. Chapter 2

Zhanna perched on the edge of the twin mattress in the Soldier’s room, watching him clean his shotgun. The last two days of travel had been exhausting and exhilarating—she’d seen the Eiffel Tower, the great sprawling cities of Italy burning in the darkness, the night chill becoming sultry even in the plane. She’d walked around several airports, marveling at the sheer number of people you could stuff into a single place, her arm linked firmly through the Soldier’s. She’d eaten food she hadn’t known existed, and been very sick afterward. He’d taken her on a walk through the desert, looking at a sky that seemed almost suffocatingly large and empty, arid heat stealing the spit from her mouth. Her brother, after his first aggravated snarl at the Soldier’s announcement that they were dating, had left the two of them alone, muttering something under his breath.

It was like him to snarl, then avoid, then come to terms. She had known not to take his bear-like roaring seriously. He was still over-protective Mischa, unable to understand that his sister had grown up and wasn’t the too skinny shadow he thought he remembered. He still eyed her when he thought she wasn’t looking, following her arm up to the heavy breasts that jutted from her chest and down again with a confused, disgruntled scowl.

He refused to talk to the Soldier altogether, not that it seemed to bother the man. Very little did. Zhanna couldn’t figure out if she found it charming or frustrating that the Soldier was so amazingly, fecklessly cheerful. She’d seen a hint of his temper when the Heavy had argued against taking her back with them. The cheery grin had fallen quickly off his face, which flushed brick red as his fists curled. Violence hung between them, almost visible. Zhanna had thought they would fight and worried about the smaller Soldier. Her brother had always been a talented brawler, using a combination of his great strength and momentum to end fights, often with a single punch.

Instead, after a moment, the Heavy had snorted, looking down his nose at the Soldier. “You want to bring her? You will take care of her.”

The Soldier had nodded once, curtly, and they backed away from each other.

Zhanna had wondered what kind of fighter the Soldier was, to have provoked her brother without suffering a broken jaw for it. He had to be good, or simply vicious.

The Soldier looked up at her, his crooked grin lighting his homely face. “You hungry yet, Honey-Bear?”

Zhanna nodded, bouncing up easily to her feet. She was hungry, but just as bored. Once they’d landed on US soil, the Soldier had changed from indulgent to business-like, towing her to his room with very few words and setting about packing his bags. After a few minutes, she’d simply sat down on the bed, waiting for him to finish packing and cleaning his weapons. The Soldier hadn’t armed her, and what luggage she’d bought was still packed, her single bag alongside his and waiting for the bus. The Soldier slid the muzzle back onto the gun’s frame with a click and laid the shotgun on his desk. A gesture and she crossed the room, linking her arm through his and letting him lead her through the door, which they both ducked slightly to clear.

The mess hall was a single room, shared with the kitchen. The Soldier had already explained that they mostly made their own food, and warned her away from anything labeled in the refrigerator, as well as any brightly colored sweets. Zhanna was happy enough to eat anything that wasn’t bear, but quickly realized that anything aside from sandwiches and MREs would have to come from her. Cooking was not one of the Soldier’s virtues.

It wasn’t one of her virtues, either, but she could manage simple things.

She made sandwiches for them both without being prompted, the Soldier settling into the table to talk to the other mercenaries sitting there in a low murmur. He reached out affectionately for her when she put the plates down, managing to find her hand and pat it without looking.

The conversation was, as best she could follow it, about their next stop. Something about the rain and rust, and better places to stage an ambush. Zhanna crunched through her sandwich, listening to the Soldier talk to a large, one-eyed black man about vantage points and explosives. The new man’s accent was difficult for her to follow. The rolling r was familiar but the rest, a strange lilting slur punctuated with hard stops, was almost impossible for her to pick words from. She realized she was staring at his lips when he turned toward her, looking her up and down, and said something incomprehensible. From his tone, it was complimentary.

The Soldier laughed and threw an arm over her shoulders. “Big, ain’t she?”

The man grinned and elbowed him in response with an expression that didn’t need any translation.

Zhanna merely rolled her eyes, accepting it as the kind of teasing a group of people who knew each other too well would do. A hint of movement in the corner of her eye turned her head. The spreading silence in the room told her everyone else had seen the figure too.

A petite, black haired woman, office attire incongruous in the rough and ready base around her, stood beside the table, a red folder tucked in one arm. Zhanna looked her up and down slowly, taking in the gun butts openly poking out from under her arms, the white shirt buttoned up to her chin, sweat already sticking it to the woman’s slender torso and hinting at a white slip beneath it. Her black skirt was knee-length, hose a simple buff, and her patent-leather, black heels, high as they were, could not make her any taller than Zhanna’s collar bone. The glasses and tight bun, Zhanna felt, simply emphasized the point—this woman was a worker, and despite her size, intended to be taken as that.

The Soldier cleared his throat. “Honey-bear, this is Miss Pauling. She manages us for the home office.”

Zhanna stuck a hand out, as she had done to greet every other mercenary she’d met so far, and the woman stared at it for a moment before putting out a small but heavily calloused hand. Her handshake was brisk: firm and quickly over, but not before Zhanna saw the petite, old-fashioned gold watch that Miss Pauling’s cuffs had hidden, the exposed side covered in tiny flowers and scroll work.

It was a beautiful watch, Zhanna decided. Maybe this woman’s single sop to individuality, or something with personal meaning—its ornate appearance was very unlike every other article of clothing the woman wore.

She cleared her throat, wrenching Zhanna’s eyes from Miss Pauling’s sleeve and the hint of that watch. “Zhanna, is it?”

Without waiting for Zhanna to nod, she continued. “Come with me, please.”

When Zhanna rose, the Soldier gave her hand a squeeze. “Do whatever she asks you to do, Honey-bear.”

Zhanna smiled distractedly at him and followed Miss Pauling out of the room, watching the translucent stripe than ran down the back of Miss Pauling’s shirt and trying to guess at the garment beneath—a line of lace, perhaps, at the top of the slip?

When they’d reached the common room, with its antique television, Miss Pauling perched on the edge of a chair and gestured toward the couch, which Zhanna flopped down on with a groan from the couch’s frame. Blushing, she sat back up. Mimicking Miss Pauling’s posture, she perched uncomfortably on the edge of the couch.

Miss Pauling sighed. Zhanna was, as she’d suspected, huge. Easily six feet tall, covered with the muscle she’d expected, the lines of it carved on her by hard work instead of the gym. Her dark brown hair was docked into a messy braid, long enough to brush her ass and well outside company regulations for the mercenaries. No make-up, nor any overt sign of femininity, despite the assets nature had bestowed on her—Miss Pauling eyed Zhanna’s breasts for a moment enviously. If she’d been as heavily endowed, she’d be free to drop her ‘little girl’ act for a vixen act, which she thought would be a hell of a lot more fun than trying to play innocent in order to get close to a mark.

And it might mean she could get laid, conceivably as a part of getting close, instead of pretending to misunderstand innuendo because it would be out of character with the girl she appeared to be.

After a moment, Miss Pauling looked up to Zhanna’s face, finding it still flushed with embarrassment. Miss Pauling blushed herself, realizing that she’d been staring at Zhanna’s chest for some unknown period of time, transfixed by the woman’s breasts.

Her stomach growled, startling her back into business. With a blink, Miss Pauling spoke. “I’ve been sent to interview you for the company.”

Zhanna squirmed slightly, then nodded.

Relieved, Miss Pauling got on with the interview, finding out in its course that Zhanna had no other crimes than the crime of being in the camps because of her father’s political activism, and that while the woman was stubborn, she did not have the same, bull-headed need to dig in if given orders of any kind. Rather, Zhanna was refreshingly open—she’d ask questions, and perhaps buck an order, but she wouldn’t defy one just to prove she could.

By the end of the interview, Miss Pauling had decided she would likely have less trouble with Zhanna than any of the other mercenaries. In fact, she suspected she’d like the woman, if she ever had time to make friends.

Zhanna, by the end of the interview, realized that there was something appealing about the petite woman—whether it was the clever combination of questions and probing, or the hints of personality she could see in Miss Pauling’s watch and the wide band of lace now visible through her sweat-soaked shirt, Zhanna could not tell. She did know that in her own way, Miss Pauling was quite pretty. The combination of office wear and business-like demeanor did not distract her from noticing the piercing green of Miss Pauling’s eyes nor her habit of biting her lower lip while lost in thought, the gentle pressure only making her lips redder.

Zhanna was sweating for an entirely different reason when Miss Pauling let her go back to the mess room. The longer she’d sat, uncomfortably perched on the couch and watching Miss Pauling nibble her lower lip between questions, the warmer she’d felt. By the time she had bolted from the common room, she’d felt like a small sun, dwarfing the desert heat that no amount of AC could banish from the concrete walls.

The Soldier looked up as she burst in. “How’d it go, Sugar-Bear? Everything okay?”

Zhanna simply nodded, unable to sort the strange emotion flowing through her, and let him draw her back down onto a seat, tucked beneath his arm and waiting for the bus. Something had happened, she knew. Something important.

And she had no idea what it was.


	3. Chapter 3

Zhanna was still trying to figure it out when they arrived, spending the trip of several days mechanically responding to jokes and the Soldier’s touch with distracted enjoyment. Miss Pauling invaded her thoughts mercilessly, the feel of her calloused hand clinging to Zhanna’s hand and the sight of her chewing her lower lip coming back again and again whenever Zhanna’s mind wandered. It wandered frequently. She still didn’t understand half of what the other mercenaries said, her brother was still ignoring her, and most of what she did understand had to do with tactics or jokes that were obscured by the years the mercenaries had spent working together.

After a cursory attempt to figure out what was bothering her, the Soldier didn’t ask, just let her sort it out on her own.

Zhanna wished she could. She’d seen other women before—she had several sisters and a mother, and she’d been to sweat lodges with other women, if infrequently. She was no stranger to what a woman looked like naked, nor new to the idea of seeing women naked.

But the thought of Miss Pauling naked was not… it was just not, and she had no idea why the idea had crept into her head, followed quickly by the idea of taking Miss Pauling’s lower lip into her mouth so that she could bite it, too.

It was just not, she decided. It was just the fact that Miss Pauling was so tiny, such a surprise. It was just the fact that the woman was their boss.

And any other thoughts, the invasive curiosity about what lay beneath Miss Pauling’s office clothing and the strange urge to kiss her was just not, as well. Not. Not at all like the Soldier, nor like anything else she could expect. It was nothing, of course. A strange, passing idea brought on by the radical changes between her home and this place.

 _What is wrong with me_ , Zhanna thought. _Why am I thinking such things?_

Her suitcase snagged on the ragged lip of the base doorway and she swore in Russian before yanking it through the door. The base itself was a misshapen group of blocky buildings in stained concrete, warping wood, and rusting iron. The bed sagged, and it was all she could do to find a position to sleep in it that didn’t involve the Soldier sleeping on top of her or half her body hanging from the edge of the mattress. By himself, he would have had trouble sleeping on it. Their combined mass was several orders of magnitude too large for the small thing, and even after they’d taken the mattress from the rusty frame and dragged another into the room, she still could not find a comfortable position to lie in.

The Soldier, for his part, tried to make her more comfortable—wild-flowers tucked into his uniform, harvested after the closing bell, the extra mattress, he’d even paid for the company to import an olive relish she’d particularly liked on their trip back to the US.

It hadn’t helped.

Zhanna was restless, and her hours of confinement on the base while they fought had not done anything for her temper. She was used to doing something with herself—chopping wood, hunting, repair work, any of the thousands of chores that made living possible. The mercenaries would not let her repair the base, telling her that there was little point and it was the company’s problem, anyway. When she cleaned things, they were happy enough to let her, but she soon felt like a maid to nine very messy men, and she was forbidden to go into their rooms. She tried to cook, but was very firmly ordered out of the kitchen after a week of it, the Engineer poorly hiding his relief when she left. Hunting was impossible. Not only was the base fenced off, making deer and the like unable to enter it, but both Snipers hunted or roamed it, and she’d been warned in no uncertain terms that one or both men might start stalking her out of sheer boredom, made restless by the inability to hunt large game.

In a word, Zhanna snarled at the Soldier that night, she was useless.

His temper, not aided by the day’s losses, had been quick to rise, and they’d yelled at each other for an unsatisfying and painful hour before Zhanna had simply left, stomping and kicking open doors until she could leave the base. She did not stop until she had gone some distance into the woods, well beyond the lights of the base and out into the unoccupied woods around it. She had no fear of finding her way back. Perhaps out of ignorance or insulting fears about the mercenaries’ ability to read signs and know where to go, the company had seeded the woods with signs, arrows, labels, and other reminders.

It contributed to her bad mood, seeing so much wilderness turned into a strange theme park which excluded most of the animals which would otherwise fill it. It was careless, wasteful, gauche.

“Should have stayed,” she murmured, looking at yet another ugly, peeling sign that stuck out of the ground like a tumor. “Should have stayed in Siberia. Would have been useful, there.”

The sign did not answer her, not that she’d expected it would. Looking around, she found a boulder sticking out of the ground and climbed up it to sit, looking out across the too-silent woods and to the faint smudges of stars the base lights had all but obscured.

The Soldier found her brooding there several hours later, only discovering her when she cleared her throat to announce herself. She had watched him stalking noisily through the trees and high grass for a few minutes before letting him know she was there, marveling at his seeming inability to miss dry twigs or any other of the natural noise-makers around him. The man moved through the woods like an elephant, leaving a broad trail of broken twigs, crushed plants, and foot-prints in the muddy ground.

“Honey-bear,” he said hesitantly, “I’m… I should not have yelled.”

Zhanna grunted, staring at the short brush of hair atop his head. After a moment, she spoke. “Should not have been so angry.”

The Soldier put his hands on his hips. “Wanna come down and talk about it?”

Zhanna paused, strangely reluctant to come down. She could not quite figure it out, the urge to stay up there, to tell him to go away. _More foolishness_ , she thought, sliding carefully down the rock and into the Soldier’s arms.

He kissed her while they stood there, and Zhanna was startled by the strange thrill of distaste that ran through her. She kissed him harder for it, pushing at his body as she pushed at whatever it was which had took up residence inside her. After a moment, he let her push him around the edge of the rock and onto a small outcrop with a pleased chuckle, and helped her strip his pants off and then hers, laying both under his hips as a padding.

She lowered herself onto him with a familiar wash of pleasure, her hips twitching slightly as she sought the best angle. With her eyes closed, she rocked back and forth, a spectator of her own pleasure.

It still felt good. She still felt good. His body still reacted to her, his hands rising to cup her hips and dig his fingers into them. She still felt a rush of satisfaction at the noises he made, at his enthusiastic enjoyment of sex. He still remembered what she had taught him and worked to please her.

But something had changed. The closer she got to the shining edge of her orgasm, the more she saw flashes of Miss Pauling sitting on the edge of the chair, looking at Zhanna over the edge of her glasses, lips parting to speak, breasts rising against the wet cotton of her shirt as she took a breath in, reaching out slightly as she spoke into the space between them, and right before Zhanna came, reaching out for her hand and pulling them together.

Zhanna came with a shudder, sweat chilling her as she looked down in time to see the Soldier’s pleased expression grow tortured, twisting as he groaned loudly and came, throbbing inside her. She watched him, waiting for her breath to slow from its reckless gallop.

She still enjoyed it, enjoyed him. But there was something between them, something there that kept her observing them both, watching the flush slowly fade from his face, watching as he drew her down into a kiss. Watching as she slid off him and they both dressed. Watching as they walked back to the base hand-in-hand, and cuddled together on the mattresses. Watching him fall asleep, a small smile on his face, as she lay awake in the darkness.

Watching and somehow not quite satisfied.


	4. Chapter 4

Miss Pauling spent half the next week flying and driving from office to office, laying a hefty combination of bribes and threats down until Zhanna’s visit to the US was logged as the travel of an employee of TFI, the necessary paperwork filed neatly in all the appropriate places. Even despite the jet lag and travel exhaustion, she found she couldn’t stay angry at the Soldier for bringing Zhanna back with him.

The woman was just… was pleasant. She was pleasant. She was pleasant to talk to, a quick sense of humor, loyalty to her brother and the Soldier which Miss Pauling hoped would become loyalty to the company. She was a pleasant addition to the team, and someone who might actually rein in some of the Soldier’s natural talent at causing trouble and perhaps even her brother’s tendency to simply insert himself into the world around him and expect it to adapt to him, rather than doing what he needed to do to adapt to it.

Zhanna was a pleasant addition.

The thought came up every time Miss Pauling stared out the small oval window of a plane. It came up at night while she was trying to get some sleep in yet another hotel room, listening to the unfamiliar rattle of an air conditioner cutting on. It came up while she was explaining Zhanna’s presence to yet another petty official, or to the company itself, too large for any one branch to know everything that went on in another branch.

Pleasant.

Miss Pauling smiled and described Zhanna as pleasant for the millionth time, in this case to the payroll department as she explained the addition to their rolls. The gathered managers merely stared at her before one looked away uncomfortably. With a start, Miss Pauling realized that she was smiling, a genuine smile that softened her face and must have been incredibly shocking to the men and women sitting around the table she stood at the head of.

Miss Pauling cleared her throat, tapping the table with her fingertips, and ended the meeting. No one said a thing to her, nor would they have. She’d been careful to make key people fear her so that they would actually comply when she called at three am to wake them for some emergency.

That stupid smile was exactly the kind of thing she’d gone out of her way to avoid.

The heat in her face told her she was blushing, to heap insult on top of injury, and Miss Pauling could not clear the building quickly enough to keep her blush from becoming the deeper red of anger. It took an ugly amount of self-control to keep herself from peeling out of the parking lot, to drive the speed limit and observing traffic signals until she reached her hotel and dropped her purse and assorted paperwork into the chair by the bed.

Miss Pauling flopped down onto the mattress face-first, uncaring whether her carefully natural makeup would be smeared or her hair would work itself free of her bun.

She was, she thought, utterly humiliated. What possible kind of idiocy could have motivated her to stand there, exactly like the kind of woman she was not, and describe an employee whose presence had just added a week of intense travel to her schedule as pleasant, while blushing like a stupid… like a stupid…

She could not finish the sentence. “Like something stupid,” she finally muttered into the mattress, the sound swallowed by the rattle of the air conditioner.

Miss Pauling rolled over, lacing her fingers over her stomach as she fought for her familiar detachment. “Treat it like a problem,” she told herself.

“A problem.” She paused. “Not a big problem, obviously. It’s probably just all this stress and travel, and the fact that I’m so lonely and I could talk to her.”

Even mentioning Zhanna brought her up in Miss Pauling’s memory, the sight of her muscular body perched uncomfortably on the edge of the couch, the heavy globes of her breasts just brushing her folded hands as Miss Pauling interviewed her. The sight of the muscles in Zhanna’s forearms shifting as she moved, the great slabs of muscle in her thighs, just visible through her jeans as she adjusted her weight. The sight of Zhanna’s hands, so large and hard and strong and….

Miss Pauling’s eyes flew open, bulging as she stared through the ceiling.

“No,” she spat. “Oh no. Not that. I’m not….”

She still couldn’t finish the sentence. It was too ridiculous, that thought and what it meant. She was not gay. She had no time to even think about being gay, or being anything. She had responsibilities to the company, to maintaining order on that base, to the Soldier as his supervisor, and that was a disaster waiting to happen.

A disaster.

“Disaster,” she repeated firmly to the uncaring ceiling. “Whatever is happening here, it will fade with time, and I have no business even thinking about it.”

And yet, Miss Pauling’s mind wandered back to the hair that had worked its way out of Zhanna’s braid, the flush on her face as Miss Pauling looked at her breasts. The way the woman had subtly leaned into the questions and then bolted from the room.

Miss Pauling took a deep breath, her fingers digging into her hands where they lay, stiff with tension, across her stomach.

“I must be lonely. I just need to get laid, that’s all.”

She sprung up from the bed, dusting herself off, and walked to her open suitcase. After a fruitless minute of searching her clothes, she stalked to the shower.

The best she could do, she decided as she lathered, was leave some of the buttons on one of her shirts undone—the trip had not been planned for seduction, and she’d packed nothing but her normal office wear. Even the makeup she’d packed had been chosen for neutral shades, and the few articles of jewelry she wore were mostly picked for their usefulness.

She dressed hurriedly, drying her hair with the provided hair dryer and leaving it down. A quick survey in the mirror told her it was more or less useless—even with her shirt partially unbuttoned, her hair down, and made up as carefully as she could, she still looked like nothing so much as an office drone after a long work day.

Miss Pauling sighed, finger-combing the heavy waves of her hair.

“It is what it is,” she told the mirror. Grabbing her keys and wallet from the counter, she stalked out.

To her complete lack of surprise, the night was a bust. The few men she’d tried to pick up on were distinctly unimpressed by her office drone appearance and alienated by her boldness, and the few men who had tried to pick up on her were…

She hadn’t been able to make herself go through with it. Something had been wrong with each of them. One was incredibly crude. Another didn’t like condoms. Another had wanted to treat her like a little girl. Another ate with his mouth open. Another was far too drunk.

By the time she stumbled back into her hotel room, it was early rather than late, and she would have strangled a puppy if it had meant the nagging throb between her legs would simply stop.

Miss Pauling collapsed on the bed, rolling back and forth until she could strip herself down to her slip and throw her clothes across the room to land on the other bed. The recklessness of it pleased her—she never left her clothes on the floor. After all, they almost always contained trace evidence, and sloppiness was just asking for it.

More than half drunk, she lay on the bed, arms and legs spread and blood humming in her veins, skin aching with the need for something, for someone. Even with the alcohol, she knew she wasn’t going to be able to sleep, and yet another day of travel on no sleep at all was going to stretch her temper to the absolute limit.

“No one’s here,” she slurred, the words echoing in the empty room. “No one but me.”

Her hands crept in without conscious thought, fingertips brushing the peaks of her nipples, which hardened painfully. Miss Pauling laughed at herself and wriggled until her slip lay bunched around her waist.

Touching herself was shockingly good, the thrill of it adding flame to the bubbles in her blood. For once, for once she would let herself be loud, would let herself enjoy something in an unguarded way she could never dare with anyone else around.

The fingers of one hand slid easily into her. The other stroked, finding and teasing the engorged tip of her clit.

Moaning loudly, she let herself go, let herself writhe and pant and beg as her thoughts wandered and then, like a homing beacon, back to the couch, where Zhanna reached out for her and drew her down, already reaching for the aching, wet heat between Miss Pauling’s legs.

When she came, Miss Pauling shrieked, her hoarse moans rising to the range of dog whistles and overtaxed steam engines, head thrown back into the mattress hard enough to bounce.

She lay in the afterglow for some time, her thoughts going back again and again to Zhanna’s hands, to nipples which would lay against her own and the silky softness of her breasts. To the sheer size of the woman, and how it might feel to wrap her thighs around the larger woman’s torso, to be picked up and held, to Zhanna’s generous lips and her quick smile.

“A disaster,” Miss Pauling whispered. “But I don’t have to tell anyone.” 


	5. Chapter 5

By the time they met again, both women had resigned it, whatever it was, to a combination of need for company and newness, Zhanna deciding that she just needed to adjust to her new life and Miss Pauling reminding herself for the millionth time that whatever it was, it was dangerous and should be mostly ignored.

If the Medic had not used his company account to order several illegal animals, to be transported live and across multiple countries in TFI equipment, Miss Pauling could have kept miles between them both, successfully pretending that nothing in her routines had changed.

Well, except for the red lipstick.

And the red bra and panty set, but that was just for her. A little secret. A little concession to the fact that visiting the RED base made her heart hammer against her ribs, set a tickling droplet of sweat wending its way down her torso, setting her skin to hum as it went.

Miss Pauling pulled up to the Sawmill base in a spray of gravel, killing the engine with unnecessary firmness. As was her habit, she checked the mirror.

Looking back at her, flushed cheeks and glossy eyes under a thick line of black, her lips scarlet. Miss Pauling blinked. She looked like… she looked like what she was: a woman hoping to impress someone.

“Fuck,” she spat, and raised a hand to scrub at her lipstick before lowering it again. That shade would smear, and through the windshield she could already see the Medic making his way to the car, his normal litany of denial and bargaining no doubt already cued and ready to be held up like a shield against the company’s censure.

Miss Pauling was, she realized, well and truly sick of it. She was sick of his excuses, of the way he just kept doing these little things and she kept being summoned to scold him, as if he would listen to her or anyone. She was sick of scolding them all, of phone calls at three am that rolled her out of bed, sick with exhaustion, to arm herself, or dismember someone and clean up the mess from dismembering them before finding a convenient grave to shove their body in.

The Medic let her get out of the car before he started, clearly startled by the expression on her face, the makeup that she knew shouted her interest in someone, and what struck her, in hindsight, as the truly stupid choice to wear scarlet lingerie under a white shirt.

“ _Fraulein_ ,” he stammered, “I know that I have….”

She cut him off, finger rising in front of her as she stalked into him, finally stopping just shy of touch. “I don’t care what you think. I don’t care what you meant to do. I don’t care that you think you need these parts. I don’t even care that this is the eighteenth time I’ve had to come down and yell at you. Stop it!”

The last sentence echoed, and Miss Pauling realized she was shrieking, her finger shaking within an inch of the Medic’s nose. He had gone cross-eyed watching it, his torso leaning away from her and hands hanging in the air by his sides.

She never shrieked.

She never lectured.

She never, ever lost her temper in front of them, no matter what stupid bullshit she’d been called in to clean up.

She could not imagine what he was thinking, and with a thrill of fear, realized that she had essentially cornered a man over a foot taller than her and easily eighty pounds heavier, who giggled as he sawed men to death on the battlefield. Any minute now, he would realize the essential facts of the situation and god help her if he decided to be insulted.

Miss Pauling stepped back abruptly, smoothing her skirt with her shaking hands. “Enough,” she said, voice still rough from screaming. “Erik, if you must order animal parts, pick something domestic which is not endangered.”

The Medic blinked repeatedly behind his glasses before straightening. “There was no need,” he started, but Miss Pauling spoke again, growling.

“I don’t care. Enough.”

The Medic took a breath, an angry flush spreading across his cheeks, before clicking his heels together and giving her an exaggerated salute.

“ _Jawhol_.”

She could see his teeth grinding, jaw muscles popping beneath his skin. She couldn’t take it back—he would see it as the weakness it was, not that he would not, on reflection, see her vulnerability as a weakness and try to exploit it for some ridiculous order or special privilege she would likely end up granting him, just to shut him up for awhile.

When she turned her head to look past him, she tensed. The sound of her yelling had brought the base population out into the parking lot where they stood, silent, staring.

If she had been alone, Miss Pauling would have sworn in any of the languages she could speak, and quite possibly have kicked something. The Medic, for his other faults, could at least keep a secret and would have found it beneath his personal dignity to exploit her tantrum openly.

The group behind him, however, had no such compunctions. The Spy, in particular, was openly gloating, and Miss Pauling knew that whatever he decided to do with her display of temper, it was liable to be more costly than smuggling.

Her eyes darted over the Zhanna, who stood with her arm loosely clasped around the Soldier’s waist. As she watched, Zhanna’s arm slid down, ending up by her side. The Soldier squeezed her shoulders, probably meant to be comforting, but Zhanna flushed anyway.

They stared at each other for a moment, Zhanna’s eyes roving quickly down to the hint of red on Miss Pauling’s chest and then back up as if shocked, settling on Miss Pauling’s lips with an expression that lay somewhere between shame and pleading.

For her part, Zhanna could not stop seeing the red, the bright, passionate red, Miss Pauling’s flushed cheeks, her slick red lips, the passion which made the air fairly simmer around her, the way Miss Pauling’s once stiffly lacquered hair was now soft, escaping her bun to waft in the breeze. She could not stop seeing Miss Pauling’s chest heave, anger making her flutter against the translucent cotton of her blouse, red advancing and retreating.

The Soldier’s squeeze made her burn with shame. What was she staring at so closely? Why was she looking at the small woman with such…

Zhanna’s eyes slid away, to the ground, missing the openly hungry expression that briefly flew across Miss Pauling’s face.

She was the only person to miss it.

The silence grew frigid. Miss Pauling could not stop the galloping pace of her breath, and the damning expressions of the mercenaries did nothing to help her calm herself. They’d seen it. They’d all seen it: from the Scout, whose clumsy attempts to woo her had been easy to ignore, to the Soldier, whose flush very clearly stated that he knew what she wanted and was incensed by it.

The Spy broke the silence by laughing, an unpleasantly oily sound that merely made the atmosphere colder. “Oh _mademoiselle_ ,” he finally said, voice still rolling with laughter, “of all the things I thought you might do, this is perhaps the greatest surprise.” He settled against the wall, leaning into it, and folded his arms. “I would not miss this for the world.”

The Scout’s color, a brick red that she knew meant he was about to burst, was more than sufficient warning for his response. “All that time, huh Miss P? All that time and you couldn’t have said nothing. You couldn’t have told me I was wasting my time. You couldn’t have just said you was gay so I’d stop bugging you.”

Miss Pauling resisted the urge to raise her hands as a shield. “What I am and what I am not is none of your business, Scout.” _My voice is mostly level_ , she thought, relieved. _Mostly_.

The Heavy spoke next, his huge arms curled tightly around his chest. “Zhanna, go to base.”

Zhanna looked up from her private misery, finally noticing the tension. She drew breath to argue, and the Heavy turned on his heel, rage burning pale in his face, and pointed, his finger stabbing the air. Zhanna looked around, blinking, confused, and the Soldier gave her a gentle shove.

Her eyes darted back to Miss Pauling, whose entire body shrieked that she expected to defend herself.

“What is… What is happened?”

Miss Pauling looked over at her, face softening just slightly. “Go on, Zhanna.”

She watched Zhanna’s face bounce from confusion back into misery, her shoulders rising as she turned and walked back into the base. They all waited for the main door to close before turning back to face each other.

The Heavy spoke again. “What do you intend? What is it that you want with sister?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the Soldier shaking with rage, his huge fists curling and uncurling in mid-air. Miss Pauling wanted, quite desperately, to reach up and flick the safety straps from her holsters, but knew that would simply change what could be into what was, and while she did have the comfort of respawn, nothing on that base would ever be the same if she let them fight her that way. They would win—too much mass and weight—and they would remember it.

She took a stabilizing breath before responding. “I don’t know,” she said, forcing her shoulders down and loosening her arms.

The Heavy stepped forward, thick finger extending into the space between them. “Will not let you use her for company games. Will not let you make her into… into thing for TFI.”

The Soldier finally moved, stepping into the narrow space between the Heavy and Miss Pauling, where he towered over her. “What, exactly, did you want to do to her?”

He looked Miss Pauling up and down slowly, making an insult of it. “What do you think you can do for her?”

Her temper, already trembling with the desire to get out again, surged against the last remnants of her self-control, obliterating the next sentence out of his mouth. Miss Pauling blinked rapidly, desperately trying not to say what she was thinking, to let it out, but the waiting air told her that whatever else the Soldier had said, it was insulting.

In retrospect, she realized that her response was, perhaps, not the best idea.

It didn’t stop her from stepping into him, her finger poking into his chest, eyes glittering behind her glasses, and explaining, poking his chest over and over as she spat at him—all the concealed, late night wishes, the desire that had kept her up nights, the things she had tried very, very hard to forget, or deny, or simply ignore.

It took the Spy’s low whistle to snap her out of it, his hand waving between them. As Miss Pauling looked up, she realized the expression on the Soldier’s face was a combination of anger, surprise, and something else, something she really did not want to identify.

Behind him, the Heavy looked mildly nauseous and shocked. The Medic, standing beside him, had a hand to his mouth to stifle a surprised squeak.

The Spy appeared to be trying not to laugh. “ _Madamoiselle_ , it is perhaps best you do not discuss such things in front of her brother. While I have enjoyed your… diatribe… it is also perhaps best that you do not say such things in front of the rest of us as well.”

Miss Pauling’s mouth sagged open. The flush staining the mercenaries’ faces had gone from worry or anger to… She could feel the blush crash over her like a tide, painful heat washing her from head to toe.

She had. She had told him. She had told them all, irritated by the stupid way the Soldier had assumed she couldn’t, by the way that everyone assumed she couldn’t, that she was just as childlike and somehow, despite the great mass of bodies she’d produced, innocent of that kind of urge.

She had worked her entire professional life for these men to see her as a sexless part of TFI, and with a few minutes, she’d very clearly declared herself something else.

And, despite the shock and anger, most of them were clearly titillated by it.

Miss Pauling put a shaking hand up to her face.

“It is not so bad, _Madamoiselle_ ,” the Spy purred. “I cannot say that I share the object of your interest, but it is pleasant to know that you are not entirely made of ice, as you had appeared to be.”

Miss Pauling let her hand fall to glare at him.

“And I have to say,” the Spy continued, “I approve of the changes in your…” He waved a hand, looking her up and down.

Miss Pauling resisted the urge to hold her shirt shut, but her hand twitched and he grinned at it.

She was going to shoot him. She was going to have to shoot them all.

The Soldier stepped forward again, breaking her stare. “We have business, you and I.”

The Demo chortled. “Aye, I’d imagine yeh do. Do tell tales if yeh do.”

The Soldier turned at that, and the Demo found himself the subject of two sets of stares, both promising murder.

He raised his hands, still grinning unrepentantly.

The Scout wheeled and stalked off, face ugly with rage.

After a moment, the group started to disperse, leaving the Heavy, the Soldier, and the Spy standing in front of Miss Pauling.

She wanted to dig a hole in the ground and crawl into it. Instead, she squared her shoulders, preparing for whatever might happen.

The Heavy sighed. “My Zhanna is not… she is not one of you. And I will not have her made to be something she is not. I will not have her used to play games, either.” He shook his head, running a hand over his stubbled scalp. “I do not want ever to hear another… to hear that again.”

He looked up at her, eyes a flash of color under his heavy brows and voice lowering to a threatening growl. “Do not use her.”

Miss Pauling looked at him for a moment, struggling to find words, any words to give him.

“It did not sound,” the Spy said, laughter still lurking in his voice, “like she had a company mandate to me.”

Wordless, Miss Pauling merely nodded. The Heavy looked away uncomfortably before walking away.

The Soldier and Miss Pauling stared at each other, measuring.

The Spy cleared his throat. “Tell me, _madam et monsieur_ , is it to be a fight? Perhaps a duel at dawn?”

The Soldier hissed at him without breaking eye contact with Miss Pauling, gesturing back toward the base.

The Spy turned and walked away, leaving his mocking laughter behind him to keep the two figures company.


	6. Chapter 6

The Soldier licked his lips, cheeks still hot with a combination of startled rage and the beginning of a more personal warmth. Miss Pauling had never been someone in his thoughts, not in the way he tended to think about women. She had always been what she appeared to be, a part in the machine that was the company, and content to be just that. A sock puppet for their bosses, popping out of thin air to administer paperwork, reviews, and the occasional censure before going back to whatever closet she inhabited. Somewhere, in that closet or just somewhere out of view, he knew she killed the occasional person to advance a company goal or to prevent someone from making trouble. But she had never been more than a tool, as far as he was concerned.

And now?

And now it was different. The scarlet lipstick, the peeking edge of lingerie, the list of things that she had bellowed—things that he had never considered outside the occasional encounter with an adult magazine or when renting a movie—she had to be considered differently.

He let his eyes wander down again. She was very nearly flat-chested, almost bony, and not even her new makeup and lingerie could make up for the fact that she looked to him, for all intents and purposes, like a boy. Even knowing what she wanted with his Zhanna, he wasn’t sure he could summon up enough interest to bother with it.

He was fairly sure she was female, but it seemed more academic than real, as if she was somehow able to take it off and put it on a shelf when it wasn’t needed. The thought of her being female in the way he understood it—naked, sweating, warm, soft—was almost ridiculous.

With a mental shrug, he closed the space between them and picked Miss Pauling up before kissing her. Maybe he could learn to warm up to her. Maybe it would just mean an adjustment period, and he’d come to see her the way he saw Zhanna.

Miss Pauling froze, rage and shock icing her up, as his lips met hers. Her shock quickly melted, and she twisted in his arms, bringing her nails up to rake his face. The Soldier dropped her, stepping back quickly and feeling his face to see if she’d drawn blood. His hand dropped, a fat streak of blood coloring it.

“Jesus, Pauling, all you had to say was ‘no.’”

She was shaking, her eyes wild and fingers hooked.

“You didn’t fucking ask,” she hissed, her hands itching for the butts of her pistols. “You just…”

He looked down at her, expression cool. “You didn’t fucking ask, either.”

“I don’t have to fucking ask to think about her. Not you, not anybody.” _Never_ , her thoughts sang. _Never do my thoughts belong to anyone else_.

The Soldier watched her chase her temper and wrestle it. Somehow, they’d all missed the kind of rampant temper that had apparently lurked, shallow, under the sexless front she’d put up. It made him wonder what else lay inside her, what other things she hid from everyone else.

It made him wonder what she thought of herself, how differently she saw who she was and what she could do, and he was not about to let her order him around in any more ways than she already did.

“I’m not sharing with you,” he said when she straightened, voice firm. “And I’m not letting her go.”

Miss Pauling’s nostrils flared, her hands rising again before she forced them to her side. “She’s not a thing,” she said, shrillness creeping into her normal tone. “You can’t piss on her and make her yours. She can make her own choices.”

It was not, she wanted to explain, that she even wanted to fight over Zhanna. It was his stupid, blind assumption that he could claim her, that his desire was enough and could somehow make everything be what he thought it should be. It was the fact that he had put his foot down, had claimed Zhanna like a thing he could own, and it made Miss Pauling want to put two slugs between his heavy eyebrows and spit on his cooling corpse.

The Soldier growled, a low, menacing sound, in response, drawing himself up to tower over her. Despite the faint edge of fear that poured electricity down her rigid spine, Miss Pauling did not cringe back.

She would not. She could not. Not as his boss, not as his overseer, and definitely not as the person she was increasingly surprised to find resented it. No mercenary was going to be able to tell her what to do, and no man—she was surprised again to find the thought had such venom in it—was going to tell her how she was to feel about anything.

No one was going to tell her how to feel about anything.

Miss Pauling blinked, startled, eyes slipping away from the Soldier. How had she missed it? How had she missed how she felt about working for TFI, about rolling out of her lonely bed and avoiding contact any more personal than a one-night stand in whatever city she ended up in. How had she not known, not until meeting Zhanna, that she wanted more?

With a disgusted snarl, the Soldier spun and stalked back toward the base, leaving Miss Pauling standing, stunned by the torrent of rebellion that she had not known she possessed. She walked over to the hood of her car and sat down on it, heedless of the dirt, eyes fixed on the familiar, run-down silhouette of the base.

She did not want to get back in her car and drive the lonely miles to her apartment, the air stale with neglect. She did not want to dock her phone by the bed, its ringer turned to maximum volume to make it easier to wake her up at some godawful hour to commit felonies for who knew what reason.

She did not want to lay in that cold bed, recorded rain sounds a faint whisper for fear that they might interfere with the phone, nor did she want to get up the next morning, if she was lucky, eat a quick breakfast of cereal, if she was lucky, and breathe in second-hand smoke all day while chasing paperwork and phone calls to whatever branch of the company the Administrator needed her to pester that day.

What she wanted was….

She wanted not to be alone.

Miss Pauling worked her bun out of her hair, no easy task with half her hair already down and snarled in the elastic which held it. The fitful breeze caught it instantly, turning it into a mane of tickling tendrils which she ignored after a few fruitless attempts to trap it behind her ears.

She wanted to know if Zhanna felt the same way, to hear the woman say, in her heavily accented English, that she had thought of her the way Miss Pauling had.

She wanted to fall asleep next to her, to not be faced with the task of warming up her bed alone, the cold nipping at her numbed toes and the vacant stillness making her bedroom seem too large despite the recorded sounds she played to fill it.

She wanted to find out what Zhanna ate for breakfast.

But above all, she wanted to sit in Zhanna’s lap, to cradle the woman between her thighs and see if she felt the same thrill, the same wondering need.

Miss Pauling stared through the base doors, wishing for magic, the first time since she was a child. She wished that she could reach inside the doors and summon Zhanna to sit with her, to search for the words to describe what she felt and learn her head against Zhanna’s shoulder.

Miss Pauling sighed. Wishes, like magic, were for children and fools, and despite the last hour, she was neither.

Her whole body felt heavy as she stood up, dragged down by something more insidious than gravity.

“How do I know,” she whispered, “that she even feels the same way?”

She answered herself, voice firming. “And why am I brooding over this like an adolescent?”

Straightening, Miss Pauling walked the few steps to her car door and opened it. With a lingering glance at the base doors, she drove away, radio off, window down, trying not to think about anything.


	7. Chapter 7

Zhanna stood near the base doors, worry tugging at her. Something was happening—something complicated, something that involved Miss Pauling and the mercenaries. Her brother rarely told her what to do any more. She’d broken him of that habit a few months after they broke out of the camps, and he hadn’t done it since. The tone of his voice…

Zhanna hugged herself. She hadn’t heard that tone from him since then, either. Not since the camps. That diamond-hard slap of sound, the same tone of voice he’d used when he stepped between her and the guards, trying to give her time to escape, daring them to bear down on him and forget her.

And the Soldier, the expression on his face, the glittering edge of violence on his face…

And Miss Pauling, the way her shoulders had squared up, the way she had looked as if she was ready to step into a fist. Ridiculous, the idea that such a small woman could or should have to defend herself against…

Against what?

She was so _small_.

Zhanna took a single step toward the base doors. Whatever was happening, whatever her brother and the Soldier wanted to hide from her, it meant hurting Miss Pauling, and she would not allow it. She would not allow Miss Pauling to be hurt by anyone.

Another step, and the base doors opened, the mercenaries trickling through them. They eyed her oddly, up and down before looking away as if she had done something she ought to be ashamed of. The Scout stopped a step from her, his lips peeled back from his buck teeth and curling, disgusted. He took a breath and Zhanna blinked, worry softening her face.

The Scout shook his head and pushed past her, muttering something under his breath. When Zhanna put her hand on the base doors, the Sniper took her wrist.

It took him three tries to make her understand him, but she finally did.

“Private,” he said. “Best if you stay out of it.”

Zhanna stared down at the sun dark fingers wrapped like steel around her wrist until the Sniper let go. He shrugged apologetically, giving her a faint half-smile.

She frowned at him, thick eyebrows meeting, but turned to see her brother walk through the doors, closing them with a bang.

“Zhanna,” he started, tone wandering and unsure, but she did not let him finish.

“What, Mischa? What is happening?” Zhanna walked up to him, poking him in the chest with a meaty finger. “What foolish thing have you done to her?”

Her brother’s mouth sagged open, working silently, and he reached up to curl his hand around hers, forcing her finger down. “It is nothing,” he finally said. “Nothing for you. Miss Pauling is fine. She is just talking to your… your man.”

“Why,” Zhanna said urgently. “Why you tell me to come back here? Why so… so upset?”

The Heavy refused to look at her, his eyes skipping away and latching onto the wall. “A company thing,” he said. “There is a company thing and they must talk. Is not big deal.”

When Zhanna tried to brush past him, her brother grabbed her shoulders. “Let them talk.”

Zhanna shoved at him but he refused to move, tightening his arms and spinning them both around before dragging her away from the doors. She swore, pushing at him, but was stuck, held still, until the Soldier stopped by them a few minutes later, his face still bleeding.

Zhanna stilled, looking at the nail marks across his cheek, her face paling. “What did you do? What did you do to little woman?”

When her brother released her, she barreled into the Soldier, who staggered back into the wall, holding them both.

“What did you do to little woman,” Zhanna panted, fists rising in front of her. A claw mark on the face, such a small defense against what a man so much larger might do.

What had he done?

The Soldier watched her for a moment, his disbelieving face inches from hers, before letting go and stepping back. “Nothing, Honey-Bear. We disagreed about something, that’s all. And I didn’t get back fast enough.”

Zhanna eyed him, brain full of images she did not want to remember and adrenaline pouring electricity through her in a torrent. The camp. Just such a look on the faces of guards and fellow inmates. That sheepish, slightly chagrinned look, cock-sure despite shame. Would her Honey-Bear have…

Her skin ran in pinpricks.

The Heavy interrupted her. “He is not that kind of man,” he rumbled. “Would not do what you’re thinking.”

The Soldier’s head snapped back. “No,” he spat, offended. “Not that kind of man.”

Zhanna’s shoulders sagged, embarrassed. Something had happened, and she ran forward into memory, foolish again. She let her brother draw her into a hug, his free hand stroking her hair as he murmured in Russian, telling her it was not the same, they were not the same and everything would be okay.

After a few minutes, the Soldier tugged her away, still stiff with outrage, and took over comforting her. His muttered reassurance did not have the same familiar ring as her brother, but Zhanna made herself appreciate it anyway, the fact that he was trying even through the anger that carved him out of stone.

She let him lead them to their room, curling her up with her head on his shoulder, and let him comfort her, let him tilt her face up and kiss her gently, his lips a butterfly brush that gradually grew deeper.

She let him push her back onto the mattress, the hands that had been stroking her back now seeking and finding her responses, let him help her out of her clothing and helped him out of his own.

 _Reassurance_ , she thought, grasping at something, anything but the shame and weight of remembered grief. _He seeks reassurance. I need reassurance_.

He slid into her with a hiss, eyes fluttering closed before he leaned down, kissing her eyes closed. In the darkness behind her lids, he moved slowly, gently inside her, caressing as if she were made out of the glass she felt, the fragile and too thin edge of it just inside her skin.

“I love you,” he whispered into her ear, the words echoing.

She repeated it to him, helpless to stop the reflex to repeat, to acknowledge and agree as he sighed above her, patiently moving in and out, a tide of pleasure that swept her along with him.

The words hung between them, her ears ringing with them. _It must be_ , she thought into their dissonance. _I must be_ , pleasure gathering in honeyed warmth between her legs. _I must be_ , spilling over and through her open mouth, a barely audible moan trembling her lips.

 _I must be_.


	8. Chapter 8

Miss Pauling let the miles tick out, her headlights making a tunnel in the darkness between streetlights, the long barren stretches of the desert flickering past her car. Even speed, darkness, the howl of the wind pushing against the fingers she dangled outside her door—her mood did not lift, and she could not stop thinking about it. A creature of habit, it had always been her habit to analyze, to pick apart situations and people until she could find a solution, battering her brain again and again against flaws.

Her resolution not to think had lasted until she passed the outside gate for Sawmill before she’d been hammering away at the last few hours and what she had learned. She had no conclusion, no ready solution to apply, nothing to take back the words she’d said and the realization that her job, her precious job, had been so tiring, so incredibly draining for her.

Miss Pauling snorted, the hand trailing in the wind coming up to dash the tears from her eyes. That wasn’t quite right. She didn’t know it had become unbearable. The rest, she’d known for a long time.

She’d known that she wanted a vacation, that mopping up after the mercenaries was beyond what anyone should be asked to do. She’d known that she was tired and more than tired of rolling out of bed and spending hours frantically scrubbing trace evidence from herself, her car, yet another house or apartment, and that the smell of bleach was enough to make her jumpy.

As for why, and why now…

“It is all well and good,” she murmured into the wind’s roar, “to be resigned to loneliness when there’s nothing else you want.”

And it was true. There had been nothing else she wanted, nothing that had tempted her to make a change, nor even to bother getting the names of people she fucked—a rare enough indulgence, given her schedule.

If she had closed her eyes, she knew Zhanna would have been painted on her eyelids.

The bridge for a road crossing the highway loomed out of the darkness, ghostly becoming grainy and then ghostly again. Miss Pauling frowned at the gauges on her car and eased her foot off the pedal.

Speed, reckless like the things she’d said to the mercenaries. Miss Pauling wanted to blame stress, to promise herself rest and try to stretch out the broken edges of her self-control, but it would have been hollow.

She did not get to be a manager by not knowing how they’d take it—the mercenaries would have to push, to try and see what it meant, if they could suborn her authority or buck it entirely, now that she was something more human to them.

And it was just possible they’d feel compelled to try out whatever they thought they knew about women on her, the same way the Soldier had, now that they knew she would show them she was something more than a piece in machine.

Miss Pauling grimaced. The thought of having to side-step, to ignore or punish a grope, met with  another wave of exhaustion. Her bones had ached before that, and the possibility of dealing with even the mildest expression of their misunderstandings stole the marrows of them.

And the Soldier…

Even telling herself he was probably trying to work himself up to sharing could not make her any less angry at the way he’d manhandled her, the fact that he had stated a claim on Zhanna as if she were a thing he could own.

Not unexpected, that. Miss Pauling turned off the highway, letting the curve propel her out onto a wide, poorly lit street. Really, his behavior was all too common. She’d refereed far too many territorial pissings on either base not to have seen that one coming.

But she hadn’t. It had still shocked her. To take Zhanna—competent, strong, independent Zhanna—and make her a thing.

Miss Pauling killed the engine, coasting the remaining inches to a stop in front of her garage. Her house. Her little, almost never slept-in house. She let herself in, resolving for the thousandth time to fix the rip in her screen door, and stood in her living room.

It was dusty, the air stale.

She stepped out of her heels and flexed her sore feet on the beige carpet.

White and beige. Taupe. Neutral colors for a neutral woman.

Miss Pauling stalked to her bedroom, tossing her heels at the wall nearest her bed.

Wriggling out of her clothes, she stood in the center of the room, running her hand down the scarlet satin of her lingerie.

Neutral.

The word came back again and again. Neutral.

The dock on her nightstand waited for her phone. The refrigerator had the previous night’s pizza in it and a few things more green than any vegetable she’d ever stored in it. The machine that played her the soft susurrus of rain sat waiting for her to flick the switch and fill the room with some proof of life.

She looked down at the painfully bright edge of lace that hugged her chest.

“One of these things,” she said, “does not belong.”

Her fingers tightened in her lingerie, and for a moment she wanted to rip it off, to go back to a comfortably beige life, to hide behind TFI when the mercenaries did whatever they did and go back to being an extension of the Administrator.

She took a breath and her hand relaxed, smoothing the lace back down.

 _No_.

Miss Pauling’s lower lip curled up, her teeth nibbling at the edge of it. There were catalogs, to be sure. Paint could be applied, but the other problem remained.

She smoothed the satin down across her hips, lower lip popping out of her teeth.

 _No_.

Whatever the solution was, she had every intention of going down fighting.


End file.
